Wedding Delays
by doctoring
Summary: Pepper, having organized the entire wedding herself, left one small task for Tony: Hand the ring off to their ring-bearer, Peter. Simple enough, except, he can't seem to find the ring. / A fic written for Writer's Month: Trope Prompt: wedding


Tony Stark adjusted his tie for the twentieth time when there was a knock at the door. He opens it to find Happy there, holding a folded piece of paper.

"Your wife-to-be has some last-minute wedding tasks for you to do."

Tony gladly takes the paper from Happy before dismissing him. He examines it, the "TO DO" scrawled on the outside in Pepper's handwriting and how it was hastily folded into thirds, the edges not completely aligned.

_Guess she finally realized she can't organize an entire wedding by herself._

Tony unfolds one flap of the paper then freezes. Towards the middle of the top portion was two short sentences.

_**Keep hold of the ring until Peter gets it. That's it.**_

Tony scoffs, rolling his eyes. He had expected a long list of things Pepper couldn't get to before the ceremony, had already envisioned calling in reinforcements to save the day. He looks back down at the paper, reading those same two sentences twice more.

_But this is it? Just hold on to the ring? This isn't even a 'to do' task, it's a reminder. It was already established that I'd be the one to give him the ring since you didn't want him coming into your dressing room. LIKE I CAN'T DO ONE SIMPLE TASK!_

Tony grumbles to himself about Pepper taking on too much work for herself and not letting him help as he crumples up the note, throwing it away in the wastepaper basket.

_It's my wedding, too! It's not like she's the only one getting married._

Tony then pulls up the schematics for a new suit he was designing, one strictly for underwater adventures. As he was occupying himself with work, he hears someone enter the room, slamming the door behind them.

Before the flurry of apologizes could be uttered, Tony says, "What is it, Peter?"

"We have less than half an hour until they do the final seating, and they want us, like the groomsmen and ring bearer and stuff, to go over our roles."

"And you're here because?"

"Oh! I need to get the ring, Mr. Stark."

Tony opens a small, decorative pill container on the desk as Peter holds out his hand. Tony freezes.

Peter watches him for a moment, not moving at first but then opening and closing the container repeatedly, until he turns it over and shakes it violently.

"Um, Mr. Stark?"

Tony then stands up suddenly and riffles through all the items on the desk, searching in, around, and under everything he can get his hands on.

"Mr. Stark, did you-"

"Don't you say it, Peter! Don't you dare say it!"

"Well, should I get Ms. Potts and-"

"DON'T SAY THAT EITHER."

Peter hesitantly starts to help Tony search the room until Tony finds the invoices for the wedding decorations that arrived that morning.

_Maybe… Maybe I never put up the ring and only thought I did. Maybe I just dropped it when I checked out the decorations this morning…_

Tony grabs Peter by the shoulder, "Okay. We're going to go look in the main part of the church, but you are not to utter one single word about what we are looking for, you understand me?"

Peter nods his head fervently. "Not one word. Got it."

They both tried their best to appear to look casually at the decorations, when a small woman in a polo walks up to Tony and asks, "Is everything okay, Mr. Stark?"

"Is… yes… yes, why?" Tony groaned inwardly as the words escaped his lips. _I'm starting to sound as smooth as the kid here._

"You just… you've been frowning at the flowers, that's all…"

Tony looks back down at the small trellis of flowers lining the aisle. "You know what, I didn't want to complain, but this isn't quite the right shade of pink."

The lady looks startled. "It's not? Should it be-"

"Brighter. It needed to be brighter. And there's too many yellow flowers mixed in. But-"

"Right away, sir!" The lady says before running off. She only made it a few feet before she shouted at other similarly dressed people. "WE NEED TO SWITCH OUT THE AISLE FLOWERS. C'MON NOW, WE ONLY HAVE 20 MINTUES SO WE HAVE TO HURRY!"

She starts shouting about the changes Tony had apparently unwittingly requested when Tony notices that they were about to seat the guests, but suddenly turned them back around. He took a few steps to stop her then realized that if this postpones the wedding by a few minutes, then it adds more time to their search.

As Tony was pretending to drop his pen, again, to look for the ring under the front pews, Happy appears in front of him and clears his throat. Tony looks up at him, unable to formulate words to explain what he was currently doing.

"Do you need any help?"

Tony stands ungracefully and says, "You know what, I do. I think we need to do another security detail. Just check… just check the personnel, you know, for weapons, cameras if they aren't the photographer, maybe even jewelry if it doesn't look like theirs, drugs, contraband, and-"

"Want me to check specifically for rings?"

Tony glares at him and walks off, making it a point to look at Peter who mumbles, "Shit!" before ducking down behind a pew. Tony then peeks back at Happy. "Yes. Rings. Don't even bother with that other stuff."

It's now five minutes until the wedding is supposed to begin, and Tony, Peter, and Happy had still not found the ring.

Tony is pacing in his room, trying to think of where else the ring may have disappeared to, when Peter lists off to Happy the places they've already searched, in reverse order.

When Peter mentioned the main sanctuary and the incident with the flowers, Happy said, "Oooh, so that's why the entire staff was stressed about the flowers."

Tony looks away when Happy gave him a disapproving look, shaking his head. To his displeasure, Happy continues on. "You know… the staff was not happy about the searches either… Not one bit… Maybe we should just admit defeat and tell Ms. Potts-"

"NO! I don't…" Tony sighs heavily. "There's got to be another way…"

Tony felt a bit bad that his mistake is now hurting everyone else. Just a bit. But not as badly as he'll feel once Pepper realizes the ring has been misplaced.

_I only had one thing to do, and I couldn't even do that. No wonder Pepper wanted to organize the entire wedding herself…_

Tony hears rummaging and looks back to find Peter taking items out of the wastepaper basket.

"Peter, what on earth are you doing?"

"I'm looking for the ring."

Tony rolls his eyes. "Stop digging through the garbage. You're not a racoon."

"Sorry, sir, but I'm not taking any chances."

Tony watches Peter unfurl a piece of paper, clearly not intent on stopping. He throws his hands up into the air and decides to reexamine the room. Before he can figure out where to start, Peter says, "Mr. Stark… can you check the breast pocket of your suit?"

"What?"

"Check your pocket. Under the handkerchief."

Tony presses a hand to his pocket, his eyes goes wide, and he keeps patting it. He falls to the ground with a sigh, only looking up when he sees Peter's shoes just inches in front of him.

Peter hands him the note from Pepper. At the very bottom, where he didn't unfold the note, Pepper added just one more sentence.

_**I put the ring in the breast pocket of your jacket.**_

Tony throws the note away and points to Happy and Peter. "Don't you _breathe_ a word of this to _anyone_."

The wedding, though ten minutes late, resumes without a hitch.

Well, aside from one line in Pepper's wedding vows mentioning roping people into searches for misplaced accessories.

As soon as the ceremony was over, Tony started plotting how to figure out who the snitch was and how to punish them. But this was short lived, since Pepper leaned over and whispered the one thing that would certainly distract him more than a missing ring.

"I made sure there would be cheeseburgers at the reception."

-the end-


End file.
